Are women harder on each other than they are on men?

Women are far harder on other women than on men, because they are experts. To a woman, another woman is anything but a mystery — she can explain it all, and she can show off her acuity, her smarts and her memory when she dissects another woman. It’s exactly like a car mechanic looking at a car: “Sure I know how that thing works. And I can tell you when, and how, it’s going to crash. The carburetor’s shot, the oil hasn’t been changed since l976, the axle’s twisted and, since that accident in 1993, it hasn’t been the same. A new paint job would help and maybe do something about the torn upholstery — no amount of New Car Smell is going to disguise the pills on the polyester weave!! And as for those headlights — gimme a break!!!” All this translates as: “She’s going to crash and burn. She’s not taking the right care of herself, she’s been running on Fritos and Ding-Dongs, her notion of relationships is stuck in the early days of feminism, she walks like a crab because of all those ill-advised cheap Pilates classes and since Danny left her she hasn’t been the same. She needs some face work, her hair color is out of whack, she needs new clothes — and no amount of Tom Ford Youth Dew can hide the fact that she’s from the wrong side of the tracks. And as for the new tits — what was she thinking?”

Women are realists. They feel they can level with other women unless there is something wrong with them. So naturally, exchanges between females may be more pointed, realistic and candid than exchanges between females and males. In the latter case, there is the centuries-old reflex of trying or hoping to please, of uncertain fear and insecurity. After all, men have had the upper hand all through history. And we aren’t at parity yet.

You bet we’re harder on each other than on the guys. We see it coming a mile off. We recognize all the behavior. We’re wise to all the social skills. Men don’t get it. Most aren’t savvy to female behavior. Even the smartest are amazingly naive about female strategy. But of course you can’t tell them that.

I don’t think women are harder on each other than they are on men. I actually think we’re easier on each other because women understand women. We don’t have to trudge through the high grass, trying to figure out the path to each other. We speak the same language; we’re familiar. Not so with men — it takes us longer to hack through the brush to figure out what the hell they’re saying, where they’re coming from and what kind of man they are. And that’s what makes us harder on them.

I don’t know the answer to this question, don’t have a sense of it, in part because each person keeps striking me as so incredibly sui generis. I think in general humans are hard on humans. And I think we’re all very hard on ourselves, or most of us are. We’re unforgiving in ourselves of things God forgave long ago. Sometimes a man will surprise me with his gallantry, but sometimes women do; as much I think. Lately I’m thinking middle-aged and older women are the last gentlemen, that they’re the ones who’ll try to save the situation, that if the "Titanic" were going down they’d be the ones to say "Women and children first," but they’d mean: young women and children first.

It has not been my experience that women are hard on anybody except in special cases when they are depressed or seriously mentally or physically ill. Women are programmed to be communicative, generous, caring and nurturing which is why, worldwide, they build the families and keep them going even crossing wastelands with them in their bare feet. They are satisfying friends, they earn your trust and you can count on them. I have known and worked with those rare women who are not well mentally but who are very smart in their work, the ones who are always on the edge of crashing and crushing us. Those women are tedious and boring but we watch them think they are heads of state for a long time before we look for a way to eliminate them. Women are rich evolutionarily and it is in their genes to help and take care and cooperate. As for being hard on men - are you kidding? Look around you. Look way far out around you at the male/female relationships you’ve known. Who is hard on who!? There are women who are hard on men I’m sure but I don’t know the name of one.